Chapter 4 - The Meat Locker
The rain had intensified by the time the three black Suburbans pulled up behind the alley on 47th Street.
The street was lined with industrial meatpackers—grey concrete boxes with rusted tin roofs and blue-painted security doors that hadn't seen grease since the Daley administration. The air smelled of old brine, bone meal, and diesel exhaust from the refrigerator trucks idling at the curb.
Nico sat in the middle row of the lead vehicle. He hadn't spoken since they left the Rossini Club.
Ana sat beside him, her wrist handcuffed to the heavy leather loop attached to the vehicle's interior frame. It wasn't tight enough to bruise, but it was short enough to keep her from reaching the door handle.
"If you're lying," Nico said, looking out at the rain through the tinted glass, "I won't kill you. I'll send you back to Naples. There are still three families in Bari who remember your father's face. They have daughters your age who work twelve hours a day in the shoe factories."
"I'm not lying," she said. She reached down with her free hand to touch her lower abdomen—an involuntary gesture, a small, protective circle drawn by her thumb against her wet denim jacket. "Julian came to my apartment five weeks ago. He had a key that my father had sent him in the mail before he died."
"The third key," Nico murmured.
"It wasn't a key to a bank," she said. "It was a ledger. My father didn't steal the Bari money, Nico. He hid it. He hid it because your uncle was using the dockworkers' fund to buy arms from the Serbs in ninety-eight. My father was an accountant, not a murderer. He couldn't stop them, so he moved the numbers where they couldn't reach them until the war was over."
Nico turned his head slowly. "My uncle died of a stroke eight years ago."
"Your uncle didn't die of a stroke," she said flatly. "He was poisoned with arsenic in his wine at the feast of San Gennaro. And Matteo was the one who bought the bottle."
Nico stayed silent for three long seconds. Outside, the rain drummed a heavy, hollow rhythm against the reinforced steel roof of the truck.
Then he reached out, took the key from his waistcoat pocket, and unlocked her handcuff with a tiny, sharp click.
"Stay behind Marco," he said, opening the door into the storm. "If anyone shoots, lie down on the floor and don't look up until I tell you to."
They moved through the side entrance of the butcher shop like grease through a pipe—fast, quiet, and without unnecessary motion.
Marco took the lock out with a battery-powered drill that made no more noise than an electric razor. The heavy iron door swung inward, revealing a flight of concrete stairs that descended into a cold, black throat.
The smell came up first: wet salt, bleach, and the unmistakable, sweetish copper stench of human sweat that had gone sour in an enclosed space.
Nico went down first, his heavy service pistol held low against his thigh, his tread silent on the damp concrete.
At the bottom of the stairs was a single bulb hanging from a grey cord, swinging slightly in the draft from the open door above. Beneath it sat a man on a wooden chair.
He wasn't tied up. He didn't need to be. His left leg was set at an angle that no knee was meant to accommodate, wrapped in dirty grey bandages that had turned yellow at the edges. His shirt was gone, his chest covered in a patchwork of purple and yellow bruises that looked like clouds on a radar map.
It was Julian.
He raised his head slowly, his eyes swollen down to thin slits under brow ridges that were split and crusted with dry blood.
"Nico?" he croaked.
His voice was thin, like wet paper being torn.
Nico dropped his gun into its holster in a single motion and was on his knees beside the chair before Marco had even cleared the bottom step.
"Julian," Nico whispered. His big, scarred hands reached out, hovering over his brother's shoulders as if he were afraid that touching him would cause the remaining pieces to fall apart. "Julian, you idiot. You absolute idiot."
Julian tried to smile, but his top lip was split through the middle. "She... she told you?"
"She sang," Nico said, his voice thick, rough as unplaned pine. "The stupid half-step. She sang it in the middle of the dining room while I was trying to eat my dinner."
Julian let out a wet, rattling cough that ended in a gasp of pain. "Did you... did you bring the coat? It's cold down here, Nico. It's so damn cold."
Nico stripped his heavy cashmere topcoat off in one movement, wrapping it around his brother's shoulders, pulling the lapels tight around Julian's throat.
Then he looked up at Ana, who was standing at the foot of the stairs, her back pressed against the damp lime-washed wall.
May you like
"Where is Matteo?" Nico asked her.
"He's not here," Julian whispered from beneath the coat. "He... he went to the house on Clark Street, Nico. He knew she was pregnant. He was going to... he said he was going to make sure the third key died with the mother."
